no title

Neighborhoods

New owners plan to rehab 'spooky house'

Girl was shot there during Halloween incident

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoKyle Robertson | DISPATCH photosMike Wilson and his fiancee, Emma Rousculp, are remodeling a house in Worthington from where Allen S. Davis shot Rachel Barezinsky in a passing car in 2006.

From ‘spooky’ house to handyman special

2004

• June: Sondra Davis is put on notice about Worthington’s noxious-weed ordinance. She defends
her right to “natural gardening.”

2006

• Aug. 22: Allen S. Davis fires a .22-caliber rifle from his bedroom window at a car outside his
Worthington home about 10 p.m., striking a 17-year-old, Rachel Barezinsky, once in the head. Four
other high-school girls with her are not injured.

More Articles

New buds are forming on overgrown shrubs, and crocuses are pushing through the soil outside 141
Sharon Springs Dr. in Worthington.

Inside the house, its new occupants are removing decades of decay and stripping walls to their
studs, hoping for a similar rebirth beneath its old roof.

Mike Wilson, a part-time chef, and his fiancee, Emma Rousculp, want to make a home out of the
vacant house where Sondra Davis and her son, Allen, once lived and outside of which a teenage girl
nearly died.

Rousculp’s parents bought the house for $39,000 at a Franklin County sheriff’s auction this
month. It had sat vacant since Sondra Davis was found dead there in 2009.

Exposed plumbing and electrical wiring abound. There are structural questions in nearly every
room. The house has only one toilet, and it’s in the basement.

And then there are the memories of its violent past.

“It seems like a real sad story,” said Wilson, who had lived on Columbus’ South Side. “It seems
terrible.”

It was about six years ago when Allen Davis shot 17-year-old Rachel Barezinsky as she was in a
car passing the house on an August night shortly before the school year was to begin. Rachel and
four other soon-to-be seniors at Thomas Worthington High School dared one another to visit the
house, which everyone in the neighborhood called spooky. Three girls had stepped onto the property
before quickly returning to the car.

Allen Davis had grown up in the house beside Walnut Grove Cemetery. He was taunted and teased
through his school years; his mother was dogged by city officials and neighbors about keeping up
the property.

When Sondra Davis’ mother, Thelma, died in 2001 at age 87, she barred paramedics from the house
for two days, telling the authorities that Thelma “might wake up,” according to Worthington
police.

“They were an interesting, colorful family,” said Worthington Police Lt. Mike Dougherty. “It was
just sad the way it worked out with the shooting and all.”

Barezinsky was struck in the head by a bullet but survived. Her family said last year that she
was 90 percent recovered. Allen Davis said he was defending his home when he shot at the girls’
car. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison.

This week at the house, trash bins were filled with debris, including a broken .22-caliber rifle
found on the second floor. Also found was Allen Davis’ diploma from Ohio State University. It was
returned to him in prison through an uncle. It was the one item Davis, now 46, asked for, said Lisa
DuVernay, Rousculp’s mother.

Neighbors are thrilled that someone wants to fix up the place. A few months ago, police ran off
an intruder, an unregistered sex offender and former cellmate of Allen Davis’ at Chillicothe
Correctional Institution.The stigma of the house will be hard to shake, neighbors said.

“I think getting it cleaned up and having a young couple live here will help,” said Wayne Davis,
79, who has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years.Like other neighborhood children, 9-year-old
Leila Boussedra was eager to look inside the house.“This is awesome,” she told her mom, Ann, as
they walked by on Thursday. “Can we go in the Davis home and have a souvenir?”